I'm giving thanks to God for your extraordinary courage, first for delving deeply into such a suffering-filled topic, then for daring to lay out your conclusions for all to consider. I'm eager to have two friends who are Pastoral Care professors read this, so we can discuss your findings and their broader applications to divinity school/seminary education.
I worry a number of cultural currents are meeting to foster adoption of assisted suicide and euthanasia (ASE). Some you describe. Another is the desperate fear of “becoming a burden” or that a life might not be “worth living.” In my anecdotal experience, these latter two are common among Christians just as they are among non-Christians and hinge more on our culture of individualism. Although Christians might not be too keen on embracing assisted suicide, they may be open to euthanasia given its removal from the actual act of suicide and its medicalization.
So much of our thinking at the bedside in medicine is also grounded in using death as an instrument, sowing the seeds to adopt ASE when possible. “He never wanted to live like this. Stop the ventilator so he can die” uses death as an instrument to relieve suffering or unburden someone of a “life not worth living.” It’s important to acknowledge, though, withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining therapies isn’t ethical or legally synonymous with ASE; nevertheless, the same philosophy *can* undergird both.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here and in Plough.
I believe that the often-successful "desire to establish the clergy among the ‘helping professions’" explains a lot about why certain personality types reject the mainline in favor of Eastern Orthodoxy or even Islam -- some will simply reject this understanding of the clerical vocation.
Thank you for your piece in Plough, which I just read, and this follow-up as well. As someone who once was indifferent about assisted death, but has come around to opposition to it, it is good to see some light being shone of what is happening in Canada, and in some places here in the States. Already this issue has started to get subsumed into the typical left-right divide, and all the unhelpful arguments and battles that comes with that, so hopefully the testimony of people of faith against such a thing can have an impact on the conversation. It is just rather disheartening that so many of the mainline churches here (including my home, the Episcopal Church) aren't speaking out more clearly against such life-denying practices, or even worse, actively supporting them from some misplaced sense of love or care.
I'm giving thanks to God for your extraordinary courage, first for delving deeply into such a suffering-filled topic, then for daring to lay out your conclusions for all to consider. I'm eager to have two friends who are Pastoral Care professors read this, so we can discuss your findings and their broader applications to divinity school/seminary education.
Compassion without wisdom is a dangerous thing.
I worry a number of cultural currents are meeting to foster adoption of assisted suicide and euthanasia (ASE). Some you describe. Another is the desperate fear of “becoming a burden” or that a life might not be “worth living.” In my anecdotal experience, these latter two are common among Christians just as they are among non-Christians and hinge more on our culture of individualism. Although Christians might not be too keen on embracing assisted suicide, they may be open to euthanasia given its removal from the actual act of suicide and its medicalization.
So much of our thinking at the bedside in medicine is also grounded in using death as an instrument, sowing the seeds to adopt ASE when possible. “He never wanted to live like this. Stop the ventilator so he can die” uses death as an instrument to relieve suffering or unburden someone of a “life not worth living.” It’s important to acknowledge, though, withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining therapies isn’t ethical or legally synonymous with ASE; nevertheless, the same philosophy *can* undergird both.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here and in Plough.
Thank you.
I believe that the often-successful "desire to establish the clergy among the ‘helping professions’" explains a lot about why certain personality types reject the mainline in favor of Eastern Orthodoxy or even Islam -- some will simply reject this understanding of the clerical vocation.
Thank you for writing this! It's bracing & clarifying.
Thank you for your piece in Plough, which I just read, and this follow-up as well. As someone who once was indifferent about assisted death, but has come around to opposition to it, it is good to see some light being shone of what is happening in Canada, and in some places here in the States. Already this issue has started to get subsumed into the typical left-right divide, and all the unhelpful arguments and battles that comes with that, so hopefully the testimony of people of faith against such a thing can have an impact on the conversation. It is just rather disheartening that so many of the mainline churches here (including my home, the Episcopal Church) aren't speaking out more clearly against such life-denying practices, or even worse, actively supporting them from some misplaced sense of love or care.